The Top 5 Regrets Of The Dying Review
Grethe Presnar
For many years I worked in palliative care. My patients were those who had gone home to die. Some incredibly special times were shared. I was with them for the last three to twelve weeks of their lives.
This was the most common regret of all. When people realise that their life is almost over and look back clearly on it, it is easy to see how many dreams have gone unfulfilled. Most people had not honoured even a half of their dreams and had to die knowing that it was due to choices they had made, or not made.
It is very important to try and honour at least some of your dreams along the way. From the moment that you lose your health, it is too late. Health brings a freedom very few realise, until they no longer have it.
By simplifying your lifestyle and making conscious choices along the way, it is possible to not need the income that you think you do. And by creating more space in your life, you become happier and more open to new opportunities, ones more suited to your new lifestyle.
Many people suppressed their feelings in order to keep peace with others. As a result, they settled for a mediocre existence and never became who they were truly capable of becoming. Many developed illnesses relating to the bitterness and resentment they carried as a result.
We cannot control the reactions of others. However, although people may initially react when you change the way you are by speaking honestly, in the end it raises the relationship to a whole new and healthier level. Either that or it releases the unhealthy relationship from your life. Either way, you win.
Often they would not truly realise the full benefits of old friends until their dying weeks and it was not always possible to track them down. Many had become so caught up in their own lives that they had let golden friendships slip by over the years. There were many deep regrets about not giving friendships the time and effort that they deserved. Everyone misses their friends when they are dying.
It is common for anyone in a busy lifestyle to let friendships slip. But when you are faced with your approaching death, the physical details of life fall away. People do want to get their financial affairs in order if possible. But it is not money or status that holds the true importance for them. They want to get things in order more for the benefit of those they love. Usually though, they are too ill and weary to ever manage this task. It all comes down to love and relationships in the end. That is all that remains in the final weeks, love and relationships.
From the day she watched her kindergarten teacher drop dead during a dramatic telling of Peter Rabbit , Clover Brooks has felt a stronger connection with the dying than she has with the living. After the beloved grandfather who raised her dies alone while she is traveling, Clover becomes a death doula in New York City, dedicating her life to ushering people peacefully through their end-of-life process.
Probing, clever, and hopeful, The Collected Regrets of Clover is perfect for readers of The Midnight Library and Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine as it turns the normally taboo subject of death into a reason to celebrate life.
The Collected Regrets of Clover is a contemporary fiction that focuses on death. Such conversations can be hard for family members and I found the approach of this book to be unique. The main character, Clover, is a 39 year old death doula. She has been there for close to 100 people at their deathbed, easing the transition from life to death, taking care of their loved ones, listening to their last words, regrets and confessions.
Before reading this book I had never heard of a death doula so the premise had me intrigued. Clover saw her kindergarten teacher keel over and die and she has been interested in death ever since, especially as both her parents died not long after and then her grandfather goes and dies fifteen years later while she is off travelling. Clover keeps journals of the people she keeps company with while they pass away. There are three types of journals: Regrets, Advice and Confessions. Clover finally starts to review her own life and regrets when she gets Claudia as a client and decides to help her on her quest about her regrets.
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I have to confess to being a bit of a Daniel Pink fan. His book on motivation, "Drive", is one that I regularly recommend to people when they are trying to work out why people on performance related pay don't seem to be terribly motivated. (It is also the reason that I have formed the view that the way the recruitment industry is remunerated isn't the best way to drive success, but that's a thought for another day...) Another of his books that is well worth reading for recruiters is "To Sell is Human", but this is supposed to be a review of his latest offering "The Power of Regret", so I shall get back on topic!
Everyone has regrets. Regrets come in all shapes and sizes, and can be painful. There are a whole host of PMA-promoters out there who encourage us to have no regrets, but this book is different. It posits that because our emotions inform our thinking, our thinking informs our actions, and our actions help us to survive and thrive, the emotions around regret are actually valuable teachers.
Pink has conducted global surveys involving thousands of people to find out what their regrets are, and looked for patterns in order to categorise them. Fundamentally he has identified 4 categories of regret - foundation, boldness, moral and connection. Whether regrets are big or small, they fall into one of these categories.
If you're interested, when I asked myself about my regrets, a couple of examples were not dying my hair electric purple or blue when I was at Uni and didn't feel the need to conform to 'corporate dress codes', and not taking up the offer to have an audition set up for a West End casting director because I was 'too busy' in my sales rep job and lacking confidence in my appearance. Both of these are boldness regrets. They haven't had a terrible impact on my life, but the fact that they are both boldness regrets has encouraged me to reflect on other areas of my life where I need to be more bold.
The second of these is one that I think we all need a bit more of in general. Why are we better at giving advice to our friends than we are to ourselves? Why are we less forgiving of ourselves that we would be of others? A great lesson from this section of the book is to give yourself a bit more love and kindness!
The other huge message in this book is that if you have a regret that can be acted upon to resolve it, there is no time like the present. The best time to plant a tree is 20 years ago. The second best time to plant a tree is today. If you think about planting a tree but don't actually plant the tree, nothing will change. You will have no tree. And you will spend your life looking wistfully at the space where a tree could have been...
Disclaimer: I don't get paid to write book reviews, I just choose to write them when I have read a book that I find valuable or interesting in some way. My reviews will often have a recruitment or a leadership slant, because those are two of my key areas of expertise in the training that I deliver.
The assumption in many popular understandings about dying without regrets is that regret is a negative emotion that we can avoid if we only try hard enough. But is this true? A growing body of literature suggests that it is not.
What we need to recognize, though, is that not everyone has the time to right their wrongs and that regrets about the future cannot necessarily be fixed. A person struck by a car has no time to address their regrets or say their goodbyes. A person who dies younger than they expected will struggle to eliminate regrets about missed milestones and leaving their loved ones.
googletag.cmd.push(function() googletag.display('medium_rectangle_ahau_2'); );It is at one such event that Clover first meets Sebastian, a man her age whose awkwardness Clover reads as that of a potential con artist. He appears in her orbit several times and eventually asks her to visit his dying grandmother Claudia, and perform death doula duties under the guise of being an admiring photography student.
As someone seriously considering studying grief counselling, this reviewer found this plot very appealing. Brammer was born and raised in Tasmania, and her novel has a distinctively modern feel. At times, her descriptions of places and people can make readers sit back in awe. The words are so evocative and Brammer skilfully and warmly paints the environment and characters with a rare tenderness, which makes the reader feel as if they are there in the room.
She became my first ally in the game, my husband Kiyash joined next, and together we identified and battled the bad guys. Now this was anything that could trigger my symptoms and therefore slow down the healing process, things like bright lights and crowded spaces. We also collected and activated power-ups. This was anything I could do on even my worst day to feel just a little bit good, just a little bit productive. Things like cuddling my dog for 10 minutes, or getting out of bed and walking around the block just once.
Now, does this sound familiar? It should, because the top five traits of post-traumatic growth are essentially the direct opposite of the top five regrets of the dying. Now this is interesting, right? It seems that somehow, a traumatic event can unlock our ability to lead a life with fewer regrets.
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